Front Runner—Thor Diesendorf Founder of Canberra Timber Recycling & Furniture Design Business
A range of one-off timbers available to choose from at Thor’s Hammer, including beautiful natural edge slabs, dressed timbers from the racks and benchtop offcuts.
High-quality benchtops for kitchens, bar tops, desks and mantelpieces out of thoughtfully selected recycled timbers.
Thor's makes all their furniture from recycled Australian hardwoods hand-picked from old schools, factories and residential buildings with a rich history and story to tell.
Originally bridges, wharves and industrial buildings, recycled posts and beams are sawn out of the hardest ironbarks and gums by Thor's team and work well as feature beams, entry posts and verandah timbers.
Straight from the workshop – round leg shelving in recycled mixed ash, finished with matte Osmo hardwax.
Thor's Hammer has a skilled team of passionate timber recyclers, including carpenters, joiners, cabinetmakers and more.
In 2019, Thor's Hammer moved from the Old Canberra Brickworks, where they had been for 25 years, to new premises with more room for their timber work and storage, as well as a showroom and a gallery space.
Thor in action putting the finishing touches on the narrow "Hoop Leg Table", a crowd favourite.
Stripping out the old Tip Top Bakery in Griffith, Canberra, Thor’s team converted this industrial shell into a mid-century dream workshop, bringing Thor’s Hammer into the next phase of their business evolution.
Thor Diesendorf has turned a passion for sustainably-minded carpentry into his life’s work at Canberra furniture maker, Thor’s Hammer.
In the early 90s, when timber recycling was in its infancy, scavenging old timber from demolition sites and turning it into custom furniture was an obscure pastime.
But it was around then that a young carpenter named Thor Diesendorf saw an opportunity to build a business that not only rescued premium, seasoned Australian hardwood timber from landfill, but also sewed environmentalism and social responsibility into the very fabric of his fledgling business.
Twenty-seven years later, Thor continues to pave the way in timber recycling and waste minimisation with his Canberra-based company, Thor’s Hammer – now one of the largest timber suppliers in Canberra. The best part: they only use and supply recycled timber, which preserves the sequestered carbon hidden within the lumber, rather than releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere when it decays in landfill, or is burnt.
Raised in a family of engineers, scientists, environmentalists, poets and activists, it’s no surprise that Thor saw solutions where others saw roadblocks. With a curiosity for timber work as a kid, Thor would spend hours with his grandad, a World War Two veteran and engineer, “passing him tools, sweeping up sawdust and holding boards steady for him”.
Thor later learnt how to build custom furniture and kitchens from a skilful mentor, a carpenter and joiner named Paul Lynzaat. What’s more, it was Paul who introduced him to the practice of salvaging materials from demolition sites and crafting bespoke furniture, joinery and architectural products out of those reclaimed materials.
In the years that passed, Thor went on to expand his connections within the demolition industry, and now maintains relationships with a wide network of companies all over the country.
But while salvaging timber from demolition sites is at the heart of Thor’s Hammer’s origin story, these days their environmental and social responsibility has moved beyond rescuing timber.
From design, to materials, to energy use they have embedded social and environmental consciousness into the very anatomy of the business. Waste minimisation is a core focus, which sees them sorting offcuts for firewood and compressing sawdust into briquettes used for efficient, environmentally-friendly firewood alternatives. Nails, spikes and bolts are either reused as features in new pieces of furniture, or recycled.
Also aimed towards waste minimisation on a long-term scale, all products crafted by Thor’s Hammer are made to last, to be passed through generations. Meaning there’s no room for cutting corners!
The team builds this longevity into the design process from the beginning – from the initial design method, to the construction techniques, to the eco-friendly, non-toxic and easily maintainable glues, fillings and finishes that they apply to their products.
But they don’t stop there – Thor’s also considers their energy usage throughout the workshop.
By running operations on 100 per cent renewable electricity, only using electric forklifts and partnering with Greenfleet to offset their vehicle fuel usage, they’re able to minimise their fossil fuel energy usage and reduce their collective environmental impact.
So what next for Thor’s Hammer? Having recently converted and set up a larger, more efficient workshop space out of the old Tip Top Bakery in Griffith, Canberra, Thor’s Hammer is entering a new phase. Not only that, but like everyone else, they’re having to pivot and adapt with the global changes we’re currently experiencing (read: COVID).
Thor notes: “People are spending more time in their homes, obviously, but they also have more money to spend, minus their overseas trips … I hadn’t realised that the travel industry was our biggest competitor!” It seems home maintenance has ‘come out of the woodwork’, so to speak!
These new demands due to ‘lockdown life,’ combined with a growing consumer demand for high-quality, bespoke furniture pieces and a rise in eco-conscious consumers has triggered a business decision to direct more of their attention to furniture design and production.
And in a world of throwaway culture, ‘fast furniture’ and rising landfill crises, there’s no better company to combat these forces than Thor’s Hammer.
